Dusk until Dawn
by youareodd
Summary: In an attempt to renew her brother's death, Dusk Allard will try anything. Being haunted by a mysterious legendary Pokémon, she begins to learn the truth. Set 30 years prior to Sugimori. Rated M for major character death.
1. Prologue

Dark, cold, dank.

These are all words that describe – both literally and metaphorically – where I am right now. As I sat there, curled up, staring at my brother's grave, the Ghost Pokemon around me shuffled. My own Pokemon, Dusknoir and Gengar, stood in front of me, staring at me blankly. From the corner of my eye, at the stairs to the second-highest floor of Pokemon Tower, was a Yamask.

Blaze…

He had died just one week ago.

I recalled what had happened over the past three years…

Blaze and I had just started volunteering at Pokemon House. Mr. Fuji, a nice young man who cared a lot about Pokemon, had remodelled his house to look after abandoned Pokemon. Mr. Fuji liked us, and let us feed all the Pokemon whenever he was away. He often visited Pokemon Tower, and mourned the death of his Pokemon.

Two years after we started volunteering, when Blaze turned 18, he decided to become a Pokemon trainer. He set out to defeat all eight Kanto gym leaders, and collect their gym badges. Then he would enter the Pokemon League at Indigo Plateau, in hopes of becoming the Kanto Champion. When he reached Cinnabar Island, though, just one week ago, he was mysteriously killed in Pokemon Mansion.

No one knew what happened, he was just gone.

His Cleffable, who had died alongside him, was reincarnated in Pokemon Tower as a Gengar. Unfortunately, no such think had happened to Blaze…

I sat there, sobbing. I had done the same thing for the last week. All I did was sob. I never left the tower, into the fresh air of Lavender Town; I just stayed at the top of the Tower.

Every so often a citizen would come up to visit their Pokemon, in which case I would hide behind a grave until they left.

I had even figured out how to communicate with the Pokemon in the Tower. I had little friends. There was my own Pokemon, of course. But then there was Marowak, who had recently become pregnant. She had recently lost her own mother, to Duskull.

Duskull was the Grim Reaper of Pokemon. He would descend upon a Pokemon that was weak beyond healing, and take its soul, keeping it trapped inside the tower. Over my week, I had developed a –excuse the pun – grim relationship with him.

There were also groups of Drifloon and Phantump that would occasionally come up to the top floor. The only Pokemon that I had seen in the tower but not come to the top was the Yamask, who would always stop of the last step…

Another day passed, and the cold air grew even colder. The entire day, I lay there staring at Blaze's grave. The next day, the same thing. Then the next day. And the next. And the next. It went on for this for a long time.

Finally, three weeks after Blaze's death, Mr. Fuji came to visit his Pokemon. I hid behind Blaze's grave, and waited for him. He sat next to Cubone's grave – Mr. Fuji's Cubone was the pregnant Marowak's sibling – and talked to it. Marowak sat next to him, also talking to Cubone.

As I watched, I thought about the last three years working with Mr. Fuji, how he had cared for the abandoned Pokemon, fed them, given them shelter. He was a truly good man.

When Mr. Fuji was finished, he stood and began to walk to the stairs. He stopped just as he was about to put his foot onto the top step, and looked over at Blaze's grave. "Dusk?" I tried ducking, but it was no good. Mr. Fuji approached, standing over me as I sat there, curled up. "Dusk?" He said again. "What are you doing in here? Your mother has been looking all over for you."

"I… I….."

"Oh, my. You look terrible. Here, let me help you up." He held out a hand. I shook my head, and he lowered his hand. "Are you just going to stay up here and be depressed forever? Or are you going to come downstairs and get on with your own life?" I stayed silent, and he turned to leave. He slowly descended to the lower floor, looking back every few seconds to see if I had changed my mind. When I stayed put, he sighed and walked down.

For the next couple of days, I sat in the tower next to the grave. After the encounter with Mr Fuji, I didn't even bother hiding from other visitors. Duskull visited every once and a while, and it always hit it off with Dusknoir.

The next time Mr Fuji visited, he ignored me, assuming I had the same attitude as the last time. However, his message from last time had finally started to have an effect on me. When he began walking to the stairs after talking to Marowak, I stood for the first time in nearly five weeks and stumbled over to him. "M-Mr Fuji…" The effects of my almost five week hide away began to take its toll. I collapsed, the hunger and dehydration finally kicking in.

I woke in Pokemon House, next to a small habitat for a Nidoran. Mr Fuji noticed that I was awake and came over. "Ah, Dusk. You're finally awake. I was beginning to worry."

"H-how long was I out?"

"Oh, just a few hours. Come, you need to get something to eat, badly." He took me over to his kitchen, where he had prepared a meal for me with Apricorns. "Eat up. You really need it." I hesitantly sat at his dining room table and ate. The Apricorns were bitter, but I was starving, so I didn't care. The feeling of a full stomach was one of the most satisfying feelings o had ever felt.

I ended the meal with a burp, which I did not excuse. I just felt tired. Oh, so tired. Even though I had just woken up from a three hour sleep, I was still very tired from my five weeks without sleep. "I- I need to get some sleep, Mr Fuji…"

"Well, you get home and get to bed, then. I hope you feel better tomorrow." I waved to Mr Fuji and the other volunteers and headed on home. I hadn't seen the outside in a while, and it was surprisingly different. The sun was normally covered by a thick layer of clouds, but never raining. However, today, the weather was completely clear, and the sun shone hard and hot on my face. My confinement had had an impact on my skin, and I was afraid too much direct sunlight would almost kill me, so I jogged home – the most I could do considering how tired I was.

When I got home, my mum was waiting for me at the door. When she saw me, she wrapped me in a gigantic bear hug, and sent me straight to bed.

That night, I had a horrible nightmare. A dark, mysterious creature, hiding in the shadows was standing behind Blaze. We were in Pokemon Mansion on Cinnabar Island. I tried calling to him, but my voice was completely silent. Blaze, not noticing the creature behind him, challenged a wild growlithe to a battle, releasing his Cleffable from its Apricorn-Ball. The creature darted forward, crashing into Blaze and Cleffable, sending my screams into distorted cries of anger and pain. The two lay there on the floor, the mysterious creature now gone, escaped through a hole in the ceiling. I turned to run, but another dark creature was behind me. It levitated with its pitch black body, the white cloud like head separated from the torso only by a layer of red. A Pokemon I had only seen in books – Darkrai. Everything turned dark.


	2. Yamask (Haloween 2015)

**Sorry for the short chapter, I wanted to get this out on Haloweeeen. Spoopy.**

I woke up screaming at what I had seen. How had I seen that? I wasn't there. Was I seeing how Blaze really died?

I recalled what I had read about Darkrai in a book written by the Kanto League Champion.

 _Darkrai is known as the Nightmare Pokemon._

 _It has the ability to implant memories of others in the form of nightmares._

Was I seeing Blaze's memories? Was this his true death? The thought terrified me. No. It couldn't be. The creature I had seen isn't real. I had never seen it. And Darkrai is just a myth, everyone knew that. I tried shaking the thoughts from my mind. I could barely even remember Blaze's face anymore… I felt horrible about that.

I sat up and looked at my clock. 3 AM. I fell back and tried to fall back asleep, but I couldn't. I lay there, thinking about my nightmare that never happened. What could that creature have been? I went back through it all to see if I could remember what it looked like. It was just a silhouette. A misshapen head with ears protruding from the top. A thick tail waving to each side. That was all that I could remember.

At 5 AM, I got up and went to the Pokemon House. Mr Fuji was waiting for me there. "Ah, Dusk. Did you get some sleep?"

"Despite being woken by a nightmare at three in the morning, yeah. I'm surprisingly refreshed."

"Oh, well I wish I could tell you that the nightmares will stop soon, but, with what you've been through, I'm not sure…"

"So is there anything to do around here?"

"Hmm… It's a Saturday, so it's a slow day. You get home, I'll come get you if anything comes up."

I arrived home once again, and looked at the calendar. How long was I up there? Blaze died in August… How was it my birthday already? Normally when the day turned to October 31st, I'd be happy to spend the day with my family. But now… with Blaze gone… It just wasn't fun.

I decided to go back up to the Pokemon Tower and visit my ghost type friends for the day. On the second-to-top floor, I was stopped by a Yamask. The golden mask that it held took on a familiar face. I recalled the book written by the Champion again; this time a passage about Yamask:

 _Yamask is the reincarnated form of an unnaturally deceased human. It's mask reflects the face that it wore as a human._

I wondered whose face it was, but walked around it to get to the top floor. In the room were my friends, my Gengar and my Dusknoir, along with all the ghost types that lived in the tower. I sat next to Blaze's grave and prayed.

After an hour was up, I decided I shouldn't stay up there, it wasn't healthy, and so I descended again, only to be stopped by Yamask again.

I glanced at the face harder, trying to figure out who it was. No matter, I decided, to cheer it up, I would challenge it to battle – and catch it!

I called out to Gengar, who appeared next to me in an instant. Yamask seemed to ready itself for battle. "Confuse Ray!" A beam of shimmering air slowly made itself toward Yamask, slow enough for the ghost to dodge. Yamask used Disable, making Confuse Ray impossible. "Use Dark Pulse!" This time, the attack hit, making it crash into the wall, dropping its mask where it had been levitating. The Yamask managed to get up, scrambling for its mask. Yamask used Night Shade, which injured Gengar. "Will-O-Wisp!" Gengar send a series of blue fire-balls at Yamask, giving it a burn on its left arm.

I top an Apricorn from my jacket and threw it, landing straight onto the head of Yamask. The ghost was swallowed up. I waited about a minute to make sure I had caught the Pokemon before picking it up, and smiling for the first time since before Blaze had died.

That night, Darkrai haunted my dreams again. I had been shown Blaze's death, over and over again. I felt bad that I didn't remember Blaze's face, so each time I was forced to see him die, I tried to see it. Finally, I did. He wore a face that I had seen recently.

Yamask.


End file.
